All language subtitles for 2. Skin cleaning techniques

The first step.

I always start with when retouching a photo is cleaning up skin imperfections,

using spot healing brush and the other healing brush tools.

We want to have this done at the very beginning so that any color,

lighting or contrast adjustments can be made on a clean photo.

If we were to change the order

and start with color edits, we could have a big problem later.

If if the client changes

their minds about the look of their photos.

That's why I recommend working in this specific order.

First, clean up the skin, clothing, etc.

then dodge and burn to smooth out transitions between shadows

and highlights on the skin.

Next, fix skin tone differences followed by contrast adjustments

and only then move on to color grading.

And lastly, if necessary, you can use the liquify tool

to make any necessary body adjustments and perform sharpening

and for cleaning up the skin imperfections.

Our main tool will be the Healing Brush tool

located here, and also you can use

the shortcut key J

to select it.

There are also other

healing tools like the Spot Healing Brush Tool, brand new remove tool,

but tool and some other tools.

But mainly we will be using the Healing Brush tool

and I will also show you how the spot Healing Brush tool works.

Okay, so we always start with

adding a new layer,

so we don't want work on the background layer

so we can work on destructively.

We have the Healing Brush tool selected

and let's check the settings of that tool

here on the toolbar.

You need to make sure that you have the current and below selected

so that the brush sees everything below

the layer we are working on currently

so we can sample from the layers that are beneath it.

The rest of the options can stay.

As you can see here, I use the

the legacy version of the tool.

It works better in my opinion.

And what we want to do is to focus

on cleaning up those little spots on the skin, little hairs,

some blotchy skin areas.

We need to show our brush where to sample from,

the area it will use to replace the point we want to remove.

So while holding alt key,

we select the points near the one we want to remove,

which is relatively clean and click like here.

This way we sample that area.

We release out and paint over the point

we want to remove like so

we sample

and paint

sample again from a clean area close to the spot.

We want to heal

and we paint over

sample and paint.

Sample paint.

We can remove the hair as well.

We sample from here.

We can draw like that sample from

here and we paint or draw

and we

gradually work on the skin in the same manner.

Sample paint.

Sample paint.

It does require some

practice

for sure,

but when you get used to it,

you can work with it really quickly.

We pick up sample and we paint over.

Let's work for a little bit

on this area

as it has the most visible spots

that we want to remove.

We can also paint over in bigger

and bigger patches

like so, but Tool does a really good job

to match the skin tone, the texture and the lighting.

So we can always check if painting over a wider area works.

If not, we can always come and see

and bring back the state before.

Let's move over to this side and

take care of that area.

Just have a look at how I am doing it

and painting over

all those areas

and the brush takes care of it

really well.

All right.

Some spots over here as well.

The little ones, we want to

work with a smaller brush from time to time on these small

speckles.

Zoom out and have a look here.

We did something that doesn't look that well.

Maybe maybe a painting over to a big area

so we can erase that with an eraser,

which is over here

with a smaller flow so we don't erase

all of it just a little bit like So where?

And we can select the Healing Brush tool again

to fix it better.

That's how it works.

You you work, you zoom out, you take a look and assess

if you did something wrong or you can erase it and and do it again.

We don't need to worry about anything.

When we were working on a separate layer.

Let's move over to

this area.

As you can see, I can work with it

pretty quickly,

so I recommend that you practice a lot

with it.

Like so

spots on the nose.

Okay, Here on the cheek,

we have a lot of small

pores on the skin, and for that

we can try using the spot healing brush,

which is located here.

Spot Healing Brush.

It's a different version of the healing brush

and the one that doesn't require you

to show it the sample place.

It's a bit faster in action, but doesn't always match the texture that well.

Sometimes it can overly smooth out the area, so we have to be careful with it.

Let's check the

settings.

Sample All layers has to be checked

so we can also see the background layer.

And what we do is just paint over

the spots we want to remove.

Like that.

We skipped the step in which we

we were clicking with Alt to show it

the sample area.

It chooses the the area automatically

and it usually does a good job with it,

but we have to be a bit more careful
with it.

As you can see here, it damaged the texture

too much to my taste so I can remove it.

Erase it, and

then do it again.

So the spot

Healing Brush tool is pretty useful

for the very sharp and visible dots.

It's not that useful for bigger areas,

for blotchy skin.

We would use the regular healing
brush too.

So let's switch to that

and work with

this area for a moment.

As you can see with this tool, I can paint

a wider area and it will match

the texture, match the color of it,

and it works really well.

We can also take care

of those wrinkles here.

We just need to be careful not to overdo the cleaning,

not to smooth it out too much and not to lose texture.

I think nowadays skin retouching

shouldn't aim for a plastic look.

It's better to start with subtle retouching if we are working

for a client rather than exaggerate

and show them something overly retouched,

we will definitely save time and effort

and the result will likely be more satisfying for everyone.

Okay, let's zoom out a bit

and assess what we have done this far.

Check the before, check the after.

Okay.

Let's move to this area here.

I actually spent

quite a lot of time in my workflow doing this

as the tool,

the Healing
Brush tool does really a good job

in cleaning up those spaces in those and those areas.

And it saves me a lot of time

in the in working

with the photo on the next stages.

So if I do it good at this stage with this tool,

I don't have much to do in the next stages.

I can work with a larger brush from time to time.

If we we were removing larger

imperfections.

All right.

One thing with the Healing Brush tool

is that it doesn't handle the areas

where there's a close edge very well.

For example, we want to remove these dots here

and there's a very dark and sharp edge of the nose

right next to it.

So if we sample from here, for example, I want to remove that, that

it will create this dark spot so we can undo that.

And for four places like that, with where there's

something to clean next to a edge

spot, healing Brush does a better job

so we can just paint over it

and it's done like that. So.

So it's good to know that Spot Healing Brush does

work with

areas like that.

Very, very well.

Here we have some hair

so we can paint

over them with the spot healing brush as well.

Some speckles

right on the teeth as well.

Let's move over to the

that area and get back to our healing brush to

make it a bit bigger

right.

It's also worth zooming out from time to time to assess

if we missed something or if we overdid retouching in some areas.

I don't recommend working

zoomed in like that.

We tried to retouch at a slight distance

and that way we don't overdo the retouching

just look how many things appear when we zoom in too much.

If we start removing those spots,

we will spend a lot of time on them, most likely retouching too much.

And it won't be even noticeable when the client views the photo.

So we tried to zoom out to a point where

the larger imperfections are visible

and we only remove those.

The result of our work will certainly look

more natural.

Okay, I think we have

the skin cleaned up at this stage.

The unevenness

in the light and shadows will be taken

care of in the next step,

which will be dodge and burn so we can move to to the neck.

And let's take a look what we have here.

It seems that we should deal with these stray hairs here.

They don't look too good, in my opinion,

are a bit messy and we can try to remove them.

Also, the spot healing brush

works really well with hair,

as they are usually very sharp and visible,

so we can use that for that area and see

if it takes care of them.

We paint over

gradually moving upwards

and removing the hair.

Okay,

I think we will remove up to this point.

We can remove all that

all of that hair from from here.

We can leave those untouched so they will look natural.

So let's remove them gradually,

like that.

I think at us at this stage

we can switch to Healing Brush tool as there's some texture

underneath the hair and it might be a better

it might be a better idea to deal with it

with the regular healing brush tool

so it can reproduce the texture of the neck.

Let's see.

All right.

That does look good.

We can even paint like

like that

in larger areas.

And it does a really good job.

Okay?

It matches the light and the color, as you can see, and the texture.

So it's a really easy job.

All right.

We getting closer to that edge here.

So we have two options.

Either switch

to the spot healing brush or we can sample.

While considering the position of this edge,

we sample at the edge here

and paint in a way that

that aligns with the edge

like so

and the same.

Over here we samples with the edge and we paint over

aligns

to that edge.

All right, So let's

let's move here,

zoom out, take a look.

It's looking quite good

again.

There's an edge here so we can

sample from here and align our eye movement

to this.

All right.

I think we can

remove a bit of those

and we can finish that area.

So it looks natural.

Okay,

Maybe this one as well.

Some over here.

Okay.

All right. Let's check the before and after.

Okay.

We can switch over to the neck here

and take care of the of that

and places like here

when where there's just a difference between the light and the shadow.

We can take care of that in at the during burn stage.

So I will leave it for now

we just taken care of those

more visible spots

here on the chest as well.

Let's zoom out not to see too much

and not to overdo our retouching.

All right.

This I can

I can fix at the dudgeon burn stage as well.

I think so.

Let's see what we have done.

Let's assess the face as well.

We can also remove those two hairs with the spot healing brush.

As I said, it's a really good tool for that for hair.

It will take care of them perfectly.

Even here, like these cross hairs,

it will take care of them as well.

All right.

That's a bit cleaner. Now,

let's just check if there are any straight hairs

around the head that we should remove.

Maybe this one

and this one.

All right.

Okay.

Let's assess the state before.

All right. It's

by holding out

and clicking on the eye icon next to the background layer.

We hide all layers except for that one,

allowing us to see the before and after,

before and after.

Okay.

I think we've removed everything we needed to.

The next stage is doesn't burn, which involves

smoothing out variation in skin brightness.

So let's move on to that.